


If I Knew

by whyyesitscar



Series: Brittana Week [4]
Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 19:23:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whyyesitscar/pseuds/whyyesitscar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wonder a lot what it's like to be Santana.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Knew

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day six of Brittana Week (favorite moments from canon). Set at the end of 3x07. I listened to Bruno Mars's "If I Knew" a heck of a lot writing this one. Curse that man and his charming voice.

**maybe it is life itself**   
**that feeds wisdom to its youth**   
**\--"constant craving", k.d. lang**

/

I don’t know if she does this with me, but I wonder a lot what it’s like to be Santana. I want to be her just for a day, because sometimes I still can’t tell how she’s going to feel about things and then also I would get to make out with me, which would be pretty cool. But the best part about being Santana would be that I could sing like her.

I wish more people would realize what it means when Santana sings. I mean, even Mr. Schue doesn’t understand and he’s supposed to be our glee coach. But he gets sucked into Rachel’s big eyes and loud voice like everyone else. Everybody watches Rachel when she sings because she gets mad when you don’t.

(I don’t. Maybe Rachel is just always mad at me or maybe she doesn’t really pay attention either way. It’s okay; no one feels changed when she sings.)

I guess I just want people to pay attention to Santana because she has the worst poker face in the world. People think they know who she is because she’s loud like Rachel too, only Santana is totally a better actress. Rachel is loud because she wants everyone to know who she is. Santana is loud because she doesn’t. If people knew Santana—like, really knew her—they’d know that she’s actually pretty quiet, most of the time.

If people paid attention to her when she sings, they’d know it within three notes.

Right now, they’re all watching her with sympathetic smiles; they think this song is, like, her gay final or something. Like they’ve been testing her with lady music this whole week and now she finally passed. They’re all smiling because they think this is some kind of resolution, but that just means they’re not listening.

Santana is singing about how you never really find resolution, and that can be good or bad, and I know because her eyes look like they want to cry but there’s something really peaceful about her lips.

I was going to hug her anyway because it’s one of my favorite things to do, but she just gave me a slew of reasons, made of chords and secrets and her special rasp, to hold on even longer.

/

I thought maybe everyone got it too, after Santana stopped singing, but then Rachel showed up crying about Sectionals because she always has to be the loudest person in the room. I mean, I don’t know why she’s so upset—she rigged an election and you can’t just get away with that. As a government official, I have some serious misgivings about her credibility.

Santana doesn’t go to sit back down while Rachel cries so I stay standing, too. She isn’t saying anything and I can’t feel her rolling her eyes like I usually can, but I know she’s hurt. Santana won’t ever say it, but sometimes she wants her big moments. It makes me smile most of the time, whenever I catch her being jealous of Rachel. Today it just makes me sad.

But it’s okay, because most of the time—when we’re not doing it to each other—Santana and I are the cure for each other’s sadness. So I frown a little at Rachel and everyone’s obsession with her, and then I take Santana’s hand and pull her out into the hallway. No one notices, which is fine with me.

She squeezes my hand when the door clicks shut. The hallway is quiet, absent of anyone else even though school technically ended barely ten minutes ago. It feels like people should be shouting or riding bicycles with horns down the halls because Rachel is banned from a singing competition and Santana finally let everyone see the truth about my favorite part of her. Both of those are pretty big deals.

But the hallway is quiet and that’s okay because so is Santana, and I can be quiet too, if she needs me to be.

Santana leans against the lockers right outside the choir room and slides to the floor, pulling me down with her. She doesn’t need to keep holding my hand (I’d follow her anywhere), but I like that she does.

It’s even quieter for just a few seconds, before Santana breaks the silence with a sigh.

“I almost had my moment,” she finally says, laughing a little.

“I know.”

“Damn Rachel and her big mouth.”

“I’m an elected official now—I can have her taken care of.”

Santana laughs and rests her head against my shoulder. “That’s okay, B. Love the thought, though.”

“You’re welcome. How come you chose that song to sing?”

Santana sighs again, taps the toes of her shoes against each other. She used to do that freshman year too, a lot more because Karofsky hadn’t told her it was dorky yet. I like that she saves all her dorky things for me.

“Do you ever feel,” she starts, “do you ever feel like there’s just always something a little bit off? I mean, not that it’s always bad but it just doesn’t fit.”

“Like when you think you have a piece of hair on your arm but when you go to get it off, nothing’s there.”

“Yeah, Britt. Like that,” Santana chuckles.

I shake my head. “No, I don’t think so. Not when I have you.”

Santana hums and squeezes my hand again, her thumb brushing the arch of my palm. I smile because it tickles but also mostly because I love her a lot. “Well,” she says. “You’ll just have to teach me your wise ways.”

“Okay. How much time do you have?”

“Depends. How cheesy do you want me to be?” Santana teases.

“Mozzarella sticks and stuffed pizza.”

“Alright,” she laughs, “you think forever is long enough?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out.”

This is what no one else gets to see and I’m glad they don’t. Santana is mine when we sit and hold hands; in the back of the classroom when she draws silly doodles in the margins of my notebooks; in her bed when she always fails at staying up later than me.

The quiet is when I feel Santana love me, and right now it feels like sound stopped working.

“San?”

“Yeah.”

“What feels off?”

Santana’s hand drifts down to the hem of my Cheerios skirt. She plays with the fringe, crinkling it between her fingers and pressing it down into my leg. Santana fiddles with her hands when she’s nervous. She’s done it for as long as I’ve known her, and she does it more than people think. Coach Sylvester used to yell at her all the time when we first made the squad because Santana didn’t always like getting thrown in the air. So after a couple tricks, when we’d lift her up for the finale, she’d flick her fingers at the edge of her skirt. I always wanted to reach up and grab her hand but I never did. Coach Sylvester certainly wouldn’t have let me, and maybe Santana wouldn’t have either. I’m kind of glad I never found out.

“I miss my grandma, B,” Santana whispers.

I could say a lot of things—how she can have my grandma because she makes brownies that I didn’t realize were special until I got to high school; how I know that she loves her abuela a lot and I wish I could make things better; how it’s all going to be okay one day even if it’s not.

But I’ve never been very good at words so I just slip an arm out from in between us and wrap it around her as tight as I can get without being constricting.

“I love you,” I murmur, and I think Santana knows that there are quiet words in there, too.

/

There are little moments of noise the longer Santana and I keep sitting. People are walking upstairs; basketball practice is starting in the gym; janitors squeak by with their totally unsanitary mop buckets.

And after about fifteen minutes, the choir room door creaks open and Santana sits up straighter. I hope this moment was enough because the spell just broke.

“Hi,” Blaine starts. We both turn to look at him, finding big eyes and bigger eyebrows and hands held up, palms out, like he thinks that’s enough to ward off Santana’s glare.

(Ask anyone else in this school—it’s not.)

“Um, I was just—”

“Don’t tell me,” Santana snaps. “Babs and the Little Drummer Boy decided someone needed to deal with me to make them feel better about being so self-centered, so they sent Dapper Dan out here to console me.”

Blaine cocks his head. “No—”

“Because Kurt has the greatest dad on the face of the planet and if Rachel’s dads got the slightest inkling that she might pull a Maureen and ditch Hudson for Fabray, they’d throw a freaking party. But you,” Santana continues, “you’re the messed up one. You had the traumatic high school experience and I’m pretty sure you’ll need therapy to work out all the daddy issues, so who better to help me explore these awesome feelings of familial rejection?”

“Uh. Okay.” Blaine shakes his head and scrunches his eyebrows together and it looks like a dancing caterpillar. “I mean, that wasn’t why I came out here. But you’re right. I did have…obstacles to overcome and I do know how you feel right now.”

“Don’t even try it, Kenickie—”

“—And what I also know,” Blaine interrupts, “is how it feels afterwards. How much stronger _you_ feel. People don’t really talk about how much good acceptance can do for you.”

Santana looks at me and smiles because people might not talk about acceptance, but I do.

Blaine takes a few hesitant steps toward us, eventually deciding to sit down on the other side of me. He stretches his legs out and I hate how his pants don’t reach his shoes. Sometimes I think he should just live on a cruise ship.

He leans his head back against the locker and looks up. “It’s shitty,” he says. “For a while it’s shitty and it sucks, and then…it doesn’t. You go for so long having trouble reconciling your family with your feelings, and maybe you lose some friends, but the ones who stick around help pull you up higher than you thought you could go.” He cranes his neck around me to look at Santana. “I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anyone, nor do I have any desire to relive it, but I’m a better person for having experienced it.”

Santana smiles briefly and nods, looking down at the floor. She stays like that for a little bit, her grip on my hand even tighter than before, but when she brings her head back up again, the sadness in her eyes is just a memory.

“What’d you come out here to say?” Santana sighs.

“Oh!” Blaine jumps up and dusts off his pants, pointing a thumb back at the door. “Finn took Rachel home and everyone else is leaving. I just didn’t want you to forget your stuff.”

“Why didn’t you just bring it to us?” Santana scoffs.

“You get mad when I touch it.”

“And I totally should,” Santana says as she stands up, pulling me with her. “I bet Mattel curses all of its reject Ken dolls and I don’t need that rubbing off on my shit.” She walks back into the classroom and drags me along.

“Thanks, Blaine,” I smile.

He gives a little wave and a bigger grin. “Sure, Britt.”

“From Santana, too,” I add before she yanks me inside completely.

Santana messes around with her bag until she’s completely sure that Blaine’s gone, and instead of leaving we sit in the back row of risers. Santana rests her legs in my lap and I don’t need to be inside her to know what she’s feeling.

Times like this, I’m sure the quiet was made just for us.


End file.
